Arch.David Keselman
Hi.
I am David, Tel Aviv based architect, holding both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Architecture from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Growing up in a diverse community has made me fascinated with the power of architecture to bring people from different cultures and backgrounds together.
I am passionate about using architecture to make a positive impact on people's lives, and I believe that we have an obligation to create a better, more sustainable future for everyone.
TERA
Tactical Ecosystem for Regenerative Architecture
2024
Finalist – Raiskin Graduation Project Competition
Faculty of Architecture, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
October 2025
Israel is facing a deepening housing crisis that threatens its ability to meet the needs of its population, particularly the middle class. The national strategic housing plan for 2040 promotes large-scale construction, primarily in peripheral areas, alongside urban renewal processes in city centers, where high-rise residential towers have become a dominant planning model. However, towers entail complex and costly maintenance and operation, including advanced fire safety systems, elevators, and emergency infrastructure, which places a significant financial burden on residents. When these costs become unsustainable, global precedents show two outcomes: building neglect, leading to deteriorating living conditions, or transformation into luxury housing, excluding middle-class households.
This project proposes a tactical ecological framework for regenerative architecture to address these challenges. The framework integrates stormwater harvesting, vertical agriculture, habitats for urban wildlife, and passive cooling strategies to reduce maintenance costs, generate income, and improve quality of life. The model combines environmental, social, and economic dimensions, offering a context-sensitive, holistic approach to enhancing long-term affordability, resilience, and stability in Israel’s high-rise housing sector.
HUBS
2021
First Prize – Architecture of Tomorrow Category
The Israeli Architecture Award
January 2022
The project proposes a technological tool that connects society, community, and architecture, offering a flexible framework adaptable to place, time, and use. Modern urbanization creates generic, anonymous spaces detached from culture and people. Residents often have little influence over their environment, limited to expressing opinions without real ability to shape the city around them. This project offers a new, bottom-up approach that empowers communities to take part in designing and building their own spaces through accessible technology and collaborative processes.
HUBS merges human and digital interaction to foster social connection, public engagement, and advanced design. It redefines local architecture as a shared creation where residents are active participants—from concept to construction. The process strengthens community ties, builds a sense of belonging and ownership, and enhances urban resilience. The resulting architecture becomes a social and functional hub for city life.
Design begins with collaborative workshops, both virtual and physical, where communities imagine and shape their shared hub. The structure is divided into modular cells of varying sizes, optimized for 3D printing on widely available home printers. Residents select a cell online, print it individually, and later gather in a collective event to assemble the final structure. This act of co-building transforms a digital design into a physical, social space while reinforcing collective identity. The method relies on a flexible parametric code adaptable to local conditions. Four main stages define the process: site analysis (climate, orientation), structural optimization (minimal material use), spatial design (form, openings, identity), and fabrication analysis (modular segmentation for 3D printing). The result is a low-cost, rapid, and participatory building process accessible to anyone.
HUBS is an architectural-social experiment where architecture emerges from the community itself. It transforms city-making into a shared, creative act, empowering residents, strengthening social bonds, and producing architecture that belongs to the people who build and use it. In collaboration with Arch. Omer Itah.
Reclaim the block
2023
First Prize – Urban Planning Category
Israeli Planners Association Award
April 2025
First Prize – Arthur Schragenheim Award
Faculty of Architecture, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
June 2024
Urban renewal mechanisms in Israel, as we know them today, are problematic: they are based on compensation agreements and are limited in their feasibility. These mechanisms are blind to geographical context, climate conditions, and users’ needs. As a result, they generate repetitive urban spaces with identical characteristics, often leading to displacement due to new economic pressures. Moreover, current renewal frameworks largely ignore the needs of the city itself, creating planning challenges that burden local authorities.
This project proposes a new urban renewal mechanism rooted in actual needs and personal economies, emerging from the bottom up and encouraging local organization.
The mechanism is based on the residents’ needs, aspirations, and implementation capacities. It defines “spatial rules” determined by multiple parameters at varying scales—from the city level down to individual housing units. These rules enable need-based renewal through densification and dynamic growth, managing extensions and subdivisions while strengthening public spaces and community resilience. Its implementation promotes social organization, increases diversity, and reduces the likelihood of displacement. The mechanism consists of several stages, primarily aiming to reduce bureaucracy while reinforcing both society and the city.
To establish the fundamental “spatial rules,” a Grasshopper script was developed, using a Ladybug plug-in to analyze optimal solar envelopes that ensure direct sunlight exposure for all dwellings. Based on this three-dimensional solar envelope and the positions of existing apartments, the code generates variable-sized volumes that together form a texture of potential additions. The parametric design defines a growth range, starting from existing buildings as growth cores and extending to the solar envelope as the maximum potential capacity. Within this range, a library of randomized growth scenarios is generated, one of which is explored in this project.
This parametric tool provides planning authorities with a high-quality, accessible foundation for establishing the “rules of the game” in the proposed mechanism.
House of light
2023
The "House of Light" seeks to create a social and entrepreneurial incubator through a diverse set of typologies and programs, providing access to education and employment opportunities while establishing anchors for local residents. The town of Jisr al-Zarqa is currently ranked at the bottom of the country’s socio-economic index, suffering from high unemployment rates, limited job opportunities, poverty, and crime. This project explores architectural tools, both typological and programmatic, employing the local spatial language to foster social mobility and generate new opportunities for the entire community.
The complex reinterprets the local architectural language to create a multi-level, heterogeneous environment, offering a range of housing unit sizes and types, various employment possibilities, and diverse open and built public spaces. Through architectural interventions, the project strengthens the evolving urban fabric and promotes the town’s economic resilience.
The design incorporates climate-responsive strategies that directly shape the architectural language while significantly reducing the complex’s operational and maintenance costs.
Nahariya city center planning competition
2023
Finalist – Two-Stage Public Competition
Urban Design Proposal for the Ga'aton River Area, Nahariya, Israel
January 2023
The project proposes a transformative vision for Nahariya, establishing a continuous "Blue-Green" spine that seamlessly links the city’s eastern and western districts. Rather than treating the river as a mere drainage channel, the design reintegrates the Ga'aton into the urban fabric, creating a resilient ecological backbone for the city.
A key aspect of the proposal is a radical shift in the street profile, allocating 88% of the right-of-way to pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit. This move prioritizes active urban life, replacing vehicle dominance with a shaded, mixed-use promenade.
At the heart of the project lies an adaptive hydrological system: a cooling recreational canal for the summer that expands into a 1,000 m² urban floodplain during winter storms. This approach turns heavy infrastructure into a daily asset, ensuring climate resilience while celebrating the local nature. In collaboration with Sar- Shmueli Architects, Arch. Orit Shmiueli and Arch. Ela Sar. Barabim Landscape Architecture, Landscape Architects Yael Bar-Maor, Oria Goldstein, Neve Natan, Tamar Shoshan, and Hydrologist Or Letz.
Beyond the Wall
2020
Planning a support center and daycare center that encourages meetings while connecting the city to Wadi Ahuza, reducing contact with the land and creating diverse public spaces combined with local vegetation. The design is fact-based and relied on phenomenological studies with reference to the global Maggie Centers model.
Biosphere bubble
2023
Planning a support center and daycare center that encourages meetings while connecting the city to Wadi Ahuza, reducing contact with the land and creating diverse public spaces combined with local vegetation. The design is fact-based and relied on phenomenological studies with reference to the global Maggie Centers model. In collaboration with Arch. Liz Elmakayes.
LIFE-CYCLE
2022
We propose an urban renewal mechanism that will enable the financing of abandoned spaces by architectural renewal in the spaces missing from the urban puzzle in three phases. In collaboration with Arch. Dor Peled.
Serpentine 2040
2022
Pavilion proposal for the Serpentine Gallery in London. Creating a structure that constitutes an irregular movement array, enveloping that will connect changing functions and central axes. In collaboration with Arch. Viktoria Lapotka.
Virtual-Real Environments
2022
Visual documentation of a historic building using photography and creating a three-dimensional space in augmented reality. In collaboration with Arch. Omer Itah.